ABOUT THIS BOOK

Jean-Luc Marion is one of the world’s foremost philosophers of religion as well as one of the leading Catholic thinkers of modern times. In God Without Being, Marion challenges a fundamental premise of traditional philosophy, theology, and metaphysics: that God, before all else, must be. Taking a characteristically postmodern stance and engaging in passionate dialogue with Heidegger, he locates a “God without Being” in the realm of agape, or Christian charity and love. If God is love, Marion contends, then God loves before he actually is.

First translated into English in 1991, God Without Being continues to be a key book for discussions of the nature of God. This second edition contains a new preface by Marion as well as his 2003 essay on Thomas Aquinas. Offering a controversial, contemporary perspective, God Without Being will remain essential reading for scholars and students of philosophy and religion.

“Daring and profound. . . . In matters most central to his thesis, [Marion]’s control is admirable, and his attunement to the nuances of other major postmodern thinkers is impressive.”—Theological Studies

“A truly remarkable work.”—First Things

“Very rewarding reading.”—Religious Studies Review

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jean-Luc Marion is professor of philosophy at the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), and the John Nuveen Distinguished Professor in the Divinity School and professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Thomas A. Carlson is professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of The Indiscrete Image: Infinitude and Creation of the Human, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

REVIEWS

"A profound study on the perception of God with an identity."

— Prabuddha Bharata

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword
Translator’s Acknowledgments
Preface to the English Edition (1991)
Preface to the Second Edition (2012)
Envoi

God Without Being
—1—
The Idol and the Icon
1. First Visible
2. Invisible Mirror
3. Dazzling Return
4. Conceptual Idol
5. Icon of the Invisible
6. The Face Envisages
7. Visible Mirror of the Invisible
8. The Icon in the Concept
—2—
Double Idolatry
1. The Function of the Idol
2. The Ambivalence of the Conceptual Idol
3. Metaphysics and the Idol
4. The Screen of Being
5. Note on the Divine and Related Subjects
—3—
The Crossing of Being
1. The Silence of the Idol
2. The Ontological Impediment
3. Being or Else (The Good)
4. The Indifference to Be
5. The Inessential Name Thus First
—4—
The Reverse of Vanity
1. Suspension
2. Boredom
3. Vanity of Vanities
4. As If
5. Melancholia
—5—
Of the Eucharistic Site of Theology
1. Let It Be Said
2. The Foreclosed Event
3. The Eucharistic Hermeneutic
4. Whereof We Speak
5. The Delay to Interpretation

Hors-Texte
—6—
The Present and the Gift
1. One or the Other Idolatry
2. Consciousness and the Immediate
3. Metaphysical or Christic Temporality
4. The Memorial
5. Epektasis
6. From Day to Day
7. The Gift of Presence
8. The Urgency of Contemplation
—7—
The Last Rigor
1. Predication
2. Performance
3. Conversions
4. Martyrdom
—8—
Thomas Aquinas and Onto-theo-logy 199
1. The Construction of the Question
2. The Characteristics of Onto-theo-logy
3. The Object of Metaphysica
4. Esse Commune and the Analogy
5. Cause and Foundation
6. The Causa Sui
7. The Horizon and the Name of Being
8. Answer to the Question: Esse without Being
Notes
English-Language Editions Cited
Sources
Index

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